Boyan Slat wants to clean the world's oceans of plastic, and he's come up with a technological fix — a system of floating barriers in the middle of the ocean he hopes to deploy next year.

The plan is to scrub the Pacific garbage patch — a huge area between Hawaii and California where litter, mainly plastic, has concentrated because of marine currents forming what scientists call gyres — within five years.

The idea has made the young Dutch entrepreneur a star. What started as a high school project has now raised $31.5 million from various philanthropists, including Silicon Valley mogul Peter Thiel. He's received vast amounts of media coverage, held the obligatory TED talk, and last week wowed a ballroom filled with selfie-taking enthusiasts.

The United Nations named him a Champion of the Earth.

The problem?

Many experts question the project backed by Slat's Ocean CleanUp foundation. Some are doubtful about its ability to fulfill its basic premise — scooping up plastic — as the project has yet to deploy an operational prototype.

The United Nations named Boyan Slat a Champion of the Earth | Remko de Waal/AFP via Getty Images

“Cleaning up debris in gyres is nonsense,” Francois Galgani, an expert on marine litter at French research institute Ifremer, warned at a recent workshop on marine litter in the European Parliament.

Sailing to the middle of the ocean to clean up debris represents a very expensive and technology intensive solution to a very small part of the problem, experts say.

Under the surface

Contrary to common misconceptions, most of the debris in “plastic islands” is in the form of tiny bits that can’t be seen from a boat. Only 1 percent of marine plastic is found at or near the ocean surface, while most of it sinks to the sea floor, according to a report by consulting firm Eunomia, which works for the European Commission on the issue.

Beaches, for instance, present much higher concentrations of plastic litter, at 2,000 kilograms per square kilometer, compared to 18 kilograms per square kilometer in the North Pacific patch.

But Slat defends his idea.

“It may be just a small percentage of the total plastic, but it is the percentage of plastic that does all the harm,” Slat told POLITICO. “Most life is at the surface. When it is at the surface the plastic imitates other life,” leading to marine species ingesting massive amounts of plastic.

The shaggy-haired 22-year-old, who favors Silicon Valley-style entrepreneur chic of black narrow-cut jeans and leather high-tops, insists his scheme will work. Ocean CleanUp plans to catch plastics by using U-shaped buoys with plastic skirts that will channel the debris toward a collecting system.

"What we are about to show you looks like nothing you have seen before,” he told his fans on May 11.

Ibrahim Thiaw, the United Nations Environment Program’s deputy executive director, called Slat "such an inspiration," adding: "About the technology, I don't know as of yet. We hope it will work."

That's what worries skeptics.

“They haven’t showed in any real-world test that this will actually work,” Kim Martini, a physical oceanographer at the University of Washington in Seattle, told POLITICO. Martini published a critical review of the project's feasibility study in 2014 on Deep Sea News, a marine science blog.

While the Ocean CleanUp changed the design of its system since then, Martini said it still hasn’t properly answered the core question: “Will it actually clean up the plastic or just create another giant floating marine debris?”

Scientists also worry whether the system risks endangering marine life. “The most stinging argument [against it] and he will have to solve it, is that if he collects plastic he will collect everything that goes with it: algae, tiny turtles … this is all going to accumulate,” Galgani said.

Slat acknowledges his project is still experimental, but is confident that his team — which critics agree includes many renowned professionals — will be able to overcome technical challenges.

“Until we actually do it, it is guess work," he said. "For the critical side it is a guess work. For our side that it wouldn't do damage, it would also be guess work. The first operational system that we will be deploying within 12 months, it is really a test case.”

The prototype of the Ocean Cleanup project is pictured during its unveiling in Scheveningen in June 2016 | Remko de Waal/AFP via Getty Images

Many experts don’t question Slat’s good intentions, but they say he is over-promising. "The way they communicate to the public is pretty overblown," Martini said.

A global problem

Their issue is that it's sexy to offer a quick-fix solution to the problem of ocean plastics. The scale of the challenge was underscored this week when researchers reported back from Henderson Island, an uninhabited coral atoll in the remote South Pacific. They found 38 million pieces of plastic — 18 tons — the highest concentration of such trash in the world, thanks to ocean currents which spit the garbage up on land.

But the solution proposed by scientists and NGOs is actually pretty boring and bureaucratic — preventing plastic litter through better waste policies and product design. That's something the EU hopes to do through its upcoming Strategy on Plastics.

The idea of cleaning up is “extremely catchy,” said Dustin Benton, policy director at environmental think tank Green Alliance, but risks being “a distraction” from the real solution.

Slat dismissed this. "When I started the Ocean CleanUp everyone told me 'there is no way you can clean it up and the best thing you can do is not making it worse,'" he said. "I just thought this was a very uninspiring message."

“It is not either or,” Slat said. “Saying that we should use less plastic or stop consumption” is like “trying to swim against the current.” Instead, Slat thinks, people should try to “funnel the human entrepreneurial spirit.”

“It is very much aligned with how the system works: not trying to fight the ocean but moving with it.”

Related stories on these topics:

Message in a bottle

Packagers are amongst the wealthiest people in the world, ie tetra pak , make them pay to clear up the mess they have made billions creating . No discernable difference between plastic and oil pollution .

Posted on 5/21/17 | 9:37 AM CET

www

This last sentence just hit me. Maybe there is no solution “with the current” in a system that brought such disasters to our planet? Maybe going against the current of that system is the only way to make things better, and this project is just to make us feel less guilty ?

Posted on 5/21/17 | 11:01 AM CET

Isle Aviary

Instead of criticising Boyan and The Ocean CleanUp, why aren’t these ‘experts’ offering their own ideas of how to combat the same problems of pollution.
Simply by dismissing the Great Pacific Garbage Patch as a small part of the problem won’t make it go away, as all our futures depend on the trials and hopeful successes of projects like these by innovative, forward thinking, chance-taking individuals.

Posted on 5/21/17 | 12:42 PM CET

trisul

Cleanup or prevent? That is the question … well, why not both. So what, if he just picks off the low-hanging fruit, the visible 1%, it’s still good work.

Appocoliptic chemist

@rev j Barnes
There was , but it mutated into a plastic Zombie whale pod. Nemo was not best pleased.

Posted on 5/22/17 | 12:03 PM CET

concerned

I applaud the journalists and scientists who are questioning the validity of this project. While I was initially encouraged last year by his ability to raise awareness of the plastics problem in the oceans, I am now unfortunately agreeing with the skeptics that he is wasting resources which could be better utilized to prevent the oceans plastics problem at the source. I have an MA in Environmental Policy, 10 years of sea miles/time as professional crew, and would have to agree with the skeptics that this is an idea dreamed up by well intentioned people sitting in a comfortable office who would get seasick as soon they left the dock, let alone understanding the impact of 10-20m waves. His success seems tied to the TED community’s infatuation with overly optimistic promises, and Silicon Valley’s infatuation with arrogant white men, especially if they have a fancy British accent (which automatically makes everything sound more promising). His speeches are starting to sound more like that of a con-man than a serious scientist: “just watch – it’s like nothing you’ve seen before – it’s like magic!!” Plus his whole appeal seems to be tied to his image of “boy genius with a fancy British accent, look I’m a dropout just like Bill Gates and Elon Musk, and that makes me special” – the numbers of people gushing over him, while they have zero understanding of what would really be required to solve the problem. His presentations are really uncomfortable to watch, because it’s more about his “image, charm & charisma” than any real technical details of delivery.

Posted on 5/28/17 | 1:17 AM CET

not impressed

Only when we realize that it will require changing our means of plastics production and consumption (rather than waiting for a hero/messiah/James Bond/Indiana Jones to swoop in and fix our problems) will we begin to fix the plastics waste problem – as others have pointed out, we should be placing the burden on the plastics producers to take back and recycle their own waste, or simply avoid purchasing, using and tossing away all this plastic. Unfortunately the bureaucratic solutions and policies are never as exciting or sexy as watching a “rockstar” promise you he can singlehandedly solve all your problems. He & his organization are doing a great job raising awareness of the plastics problem, but I agree with Dr. Martini that their presentations are completely “overblown” (apparently a symptom of the millennial generation where EVERYTHING has to be “EPIC/MEGA/THE LARGEST IN HISTORY” even before there is any real proof of functionality). Unfortunately the only similarities I see between him and Elon Musk/Steve Jobs/any Silicon Valley techie is the self-absorption and narcissism – responding to the reporter who was legitimately raising fair and balanced questions (rather than regurgitating your hype and propaganda, and gushing over you like so many others) with “DUH” just spotlights a prima donna who looks like they’ve been told too many times how “special” they are (maybe why very few in that organization have stayed longer than a year or two, except his mother, nanny and girlfriend).